


Group Effort; Or, How Martha Jones, Donna Noble, and Sally Sparrow Basically Fixed The Doctor and Master's Relationship

by goodboots



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Divorce, Future Fic, Gen, Gratuitous use of dubious canon, Libraries, M/M, Marriage, Oh come on though, Reconciliation, Sally and Donna and even Martha kind of ship it, Slash, Team TARDIS, The Master as a companion, You know he was totally going to say "husband" in Planet of Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:50:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna's got a Time Lord consciousness, Sally spies a mystery, and Martha's not sure about any of this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Group Effort; Or, How Martha Jones, Donna Noble, and Sally Sparrow Basically Fixed The Doctor and Master's Relationship

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a thing that happened. I'm so sorry fandom. I had to write it. It wouldn't leave me alone. Is this how serial lurkers turn into ficcers? Also this is, it goes without saying, crack, but I hope kind of subdued crack? Semi-serious crack?

i. Donna Noble

After everything–after she woke up in an alleyway remembering a giant wasp, after a tiny voice in the back of her head told her something wasn't right, after she followed a hunch and broke into the Naismith mansion and watched a skinny bloke in stripes argue with a man wearing a ridiculous collar, after the world didn't end (again), after Gallifrey was pulled back through the Time Lock, after the Doctor rescued her grandfather from that radiation chamber and started to regenerate, after she ran out from her hiding place and slapped the regeneration out of him, after she absorbed the lingering artron energy and recovered all her memories, after she slapped him again, properly, and then hugged him and Grandad, after Torchwood showed up and started performing damage control on the planet's latest mass hallucination–after all that, it came down to logistics.

She wanted to go traveling again. Of course she did, her with her new brain. Oh, the universe was just waiting for her to get out there. But first they had to see Grandad home, they had to pick up her stuff (she insisted on that one), and finally, they had to take care of the blonde maniac lying in a heap on the console room's floor, where the Doctor had left him.

"Donna, give me a hand with him, will you?" the Doctor said, and explained that the man was another Time Lord (!) called the Master–

"Do you all have pretentious names, then? Can I be the Genius?"

"Donna."

"The Superstar?"

"Donna."

"The Most Important Woman In The Universe? Long, that one, but you could abbreviate it."

"Donna, I'm serious, he's heavier than he looks."

He was. Donna didn't fully begin to understand how trying it would be, having the Master around, until she was hauling half his weight down a TARDIS corridor that seemed to go on forever.

"Shouldn't he be waking up by now?"

"No," the Doctor said. "I sedated him. He'll be out for awhile."

"Why'd you do that?"

"He's–well, you saw him, he took over the Earth today," said the Doctor lightly. "Not a new trick for him, actually, but he's never cloned himself before. He's dangerous. Needs to be kept in check, or who knows what he'll get up to."

And he listed a couple of the Master's more nefarious crimes, an alarming number of which included trying or succeeding to take over the Earth. Not to mention the part where he destroyed a third of the universe.

She almost dropped his arm. "So why are you keeping him?"

The Doctor sighed. "He needs my help. I can keep him secure here, where he can't cause any trouble. And he's ill," he said, glancing at the man slumped between them.

They turned a corner and the Master's head lolled to the side. He didn't look like much of a megalomaniacal psychopath, though the hood-rat getup wasn't doing him any favours.

"You mean the lightning-skull thing. What is that?"

"Regeneration gone wrong, I think. He's, ah, he's had some wonky ones before, but this needs time to heal. There's only one place for him right now."

***

"You've kept a room this clean and white for how many centuries?" she gaped, hefting her half of the Master's weight up onto the ivory chaise, the only furniture in the room.

"I've not been in here for many years," the Doctor replied, straightening the unconscious man where he lay. "It's a peaceful place though. It blocks out all the neurological energy in the universe, leaves a person completely alone with their thoughts. Very restful."

Privately, Donna thought that sounded horrible, and she wasn't sure they should be leaving a nutcase alone with his thoughts. Out loud, she said:

"So he'll get all healed up and you'll, what, send him off to Time Lord prison? Let him serve his time, right?"

The Doctor swallowed, produced a set of handcuffs from his pockets, and unbelievably, started chaining the Master to the chair. "No. I couldn't let him back out there, where he could do harm. It's not only the lightning, Donna. He's got this noise in his head–"

"Voices?"

"Drums. He's always heard them, ever since we were children. I thought... I thought he was injured, maybe, and then I thought they were a symptom of going mad. But now I think they might be the cause."

Donna had started to piece some of this information together. "These are the drums that bloke with the big collar was on about, yeah? The signal."

The Doctor nodded. "You saw that much. Good. Rassilon and the rest of the High Council planted a link in the Master's head so they could follow him out of the Time Lock." He finished securing the chains and gave them a reassuring tug. "But the link was broken when he fought them back through the lock. He should be free of them now."

"So what are the chains for, if he's not mad anymore?"

He smiled wanly. "Imagine you had to carry a load of bricks around for nine hundred years. Imagine how you would feel when someone let you put those bricks down."

"You don't think he'll cope without them," she said, cutting to the chase.

"I think I ought to be cautious about him, this time."

But she knew that tone from him: hopeful.

They regarded the sleeping murderous burden.

"Wouldn't it be better to send him somewhere they can help him? That hospital you mentioned, with the nuns or cats or–"

"No," the Doctor countered swiftly. "Can't send him away. He's my problem to deal with."

"Why?"

He looked at her properly then, eyes cloudy and nostalgic. "We're the last of our kind. We've had our differences, he and I, but he did a good thing today despite his madness, despite the drums. He didn't have to protect me. I'd understand if he had let me be killed, let Time be destroyed, but he didn't. And he needs my help."

Unbidden, unexpected, a new voice in the back of her head said _it's sort of my fault he's like this_ , and she gave a start.

"What? What's wrong?" the Doctor asked.

"I–nothing. Tired. Drained, really, from all the world-saving and memory-regaining." She let out a yawn that started off fake but turned real halfway through. "And saying goodbye to Grandad, that was exhausting. Not to mention packing. I, uh, I should probably get my things back into my room. It's still–"

"Where you left it," he said solemnly. "Go on, settle back in, get some rest."

And, funny thing, but when she made it back to the console room and looked at her heap of luggage by the door, she found she didn't want to unpack. What she wanted was to understand that miserable look on the Doctor's face, and get rid of it.

That could take awhile, she concluded, and settled in for a catnap in the jump-seat.

***

Having the Master on board had no initial effect on Donna's life except that she usually knew where to find the Doctor after they'd been come back from another bout of exploring/saving/running and she'd had her traditional 10-hour recuperative lie-in.

In the old days, he'd be puttering around under the console or flipping through unreadable tomes in the library or attempting to produce something edible in one of the kitchens (usually the one painted entirely bright yellow, even the refrigerator and stove, though God only knows why he liked that one best.)

Now she found him exclusively in the Zero Room, long limbs twisted into the white armchair that the room seemed to have sprouted spontaneously, or more often pacing the floor. He always stopped moving when she knocked on the door and asked "Any change?"

"Not yet," he always said.

It had been nearly a month since she'd been back on board, and the Master still hadn't woken up.

She wondered what the Doctor was doing in there, if he spent all the time she was sleeping sitting beside the comatose Time Lord. She wondered how he could stand to be so near to someone who'd almost killed him a dozen times.

 _He did once_ , _actually, but mostly it was the radio tower's fault_ , said her head, and holy shit, now she was hearing voices.

"Doctor?" she asked him the next morning/evening/who-knows-we're-in-the-vortex, over breakfast.

He slurped some of the milk out of his cereal bowl. "Hmm?"

"It's–this is going to sound barmy, but that psychic ritual we interrupted on Clom, could it have any side-effects on humans?"

"Like what?" he asked, concerned. "Are you not feeling well?"

"No, I feel fine, but I keep having these moments where–" Oh God, he was probably going to try and fix this with a trip to Bedlam circa 1800, wasn't he? Well, too late to turn back now "–where things just pop into my head. Like, ideas or words I wasn't even sort of thinking about, just whispered from the back of my mind. That's not normal, is it?"

He only smiled and looked relieved.

"That's nothing to worry about. It's only the Time Lord consciousness adjusting to your human body! Those little jolts of energy you picked up off me haven't fully integrated yet, but give it time. There might be some things you don't understand scattered around in your head–11th-dimensional chess rules, maps of New New Earth, the odd memory from me–but it's perfectly normal, I think. Your new Time Lord brain is a lot to learn how to handle."

"New Time Lord brain? Could you be any more condescending? It's at least half a regular old me brain. Just because I've got a handful of your stupid memories shoved in–"

He held up his hands, calming. "All right, all right, half-Time Lord mostly-Donna brain, right, sorry. I just meant that you're going to notice some mental changes besides the memories." His expression turned sheepish: "About the memories, actually, would you mind not paying attention–"

"Don't worry Spaceman, I won't peek if I can help it. Your secrets are safe with me." Then the rest of his rambling caught up with her. "What kind of changes?"

"Well, like this problem-solving kick you seem to be on," he'd said, looking pointedly at the broken toaster she'd been steadily dismantling and reassembling over the course of their meal.

"Oh." She had set the husk of the thing back on the table and leaned away from it. "I hadn't noticed."

He only smiled thinly and asked her to note any other major changes she experienced, and then went on a rambling streak about how all the pathways in her brain were rebuilding themselves after the mind-wipe ("Sorry, sorry,"), how she was learning to think in new Time Lord-type ways, how she'd probably start to see patterns she hadn't noticed before, think less linearly and more cyclically, more logically...

A full month with a Time Lord consciousness and she was starting to feel the logic burning in her still-human veins. Problems, just give her problems to solve, messes to correct, people to work out and save.

Memories, though. The Doctor's memories... That explained some things. Might be why she'd spent twenty minutes brushing her teeth the last time she tried to eat a pear.

***

The next time she went looking for him, after she'd slept and finished washing off the slimy residue of the incident on Afalatupa ("It's customary for a celebration here, Donna, really." "It smells like petrol and dead animal, and it's sticky. I hate you."), she wandered straight towards the Zero Room, and pushed open the doorway with the words already tripping out of her mouth:

"Awake yet?"

And the Doctor wasn't there, but the Master said, "Yes."

***

ii. Sally Sparrow

Sally was immediately curious about the mental patient in the white room.

She'd been on board six Earth-counting days, and in that time she had helped overthrow an Emperor on Farlag 9, saved the Doctor from dissection by an alien-conspiracist in the year 2299 (Donna did most of the work on that one since Sally couldn't fly the TARDIS yet), and failed to rescue an orphaned clutch of bird-people from a cadre of egg-hunters on the planet Rystana.

It was after the last adventure that she found out about him. The Doctor, looking dead tired and with bird-blood still staining his coat, told Donna to find him in the Zero Room later on if she wanted to go over the temporal engines again.

"What's in the Zero Room?"

They looked up, guilty, like they had forgotten she was there and capable of hearing every word they were saying.

"There's–ah–well..."

"Technically," Donna broke in delicately, "you and I aren't the only guests on this ship." And she went quiet and the Doctor disappeared down a corridor in a whirl of coat, and they didn't honestly believe she was going to leave it at that, did they?

Still, the answer she eventually wormed out of Donna wasn't the one she was expecting.

"He's what?"

"A Time Lord," Donna said, flipping the page of her copy of Hello! "One of the Doctor's people, the last other one left."

"I thought there weren't any other Time Lords. I thought he was the only one ever."

Donna lowered the magazine and adopted the expression Sally was starting to think of as her 'explaining face.'

"Well, strictly speaking, none of the other Time Lords ever actually existed, since the Time War is Time-locked and in that sense never occurred at all. In another sense, it's continuously occurring, though of course it'll never be possible to encounter any of the other Time Lords, since they've always been temporally dead and contact with them would violate the causality of time itself."

Sally frowned. "You just said 'time' four times and I'm not any closer to understanding."

And Donna huffed something that sounded like humans and gave her a more thorough run-down on the Master, his particular brand of craziness, and his capacity for taking over planets and/or trying to murder the Doctor.

"But what's wrong with him if the drums are gone?"

Donna looked regretful at that. "That's just the problem. They aren't gone. He's still hearing them all the time."

Sally Sparrow did love a mystery.

***

"Piss off, Ginger Spice," was the first thing the Master said to her.

Sally supposed that was fair, since she was breaking in to his room in the middle of the night (at least, she thought it might be night; Donna and the Doctor were both asleep, anyway). But she hadn't considered that the invalid murderer might still be awake, and lucid enough to recognize the sound of her picking the lock on the door. (Sally's lock-picking skills have long been first-rate; most places worth exploring are rarely left unlocked).

Still, perhaps this would be a good opportunity to turn back and head to her own room; she'd only wanted a look at him, after all, not a full-fledged conversation with a known murderer.

Oh, well, she thought. In for a penny...

"Not Ginger Spice," she replied brightly, opening the door fully and entering the room. It was indeed completely white, containing only a wide sofa and a plush stack of ivory pillows, and was dimly lighted by recessed roundels set into the walls. "Hello, Master. I'm Sally Sparrow."

The Master was a smallish man. Not short, precisely, but not particularly broad or tall, sort of handsome but mostly average, an everyman type, and actually he reminded her of someone... He was wearing red striped pyjamas, reclining on the chaise, and held in his hands a massive book; the front of it was covered with elaborate circles and had no readable title.

He did look surprised to see her; he gave a start when she opened the door, and she thought he might get up off the sofa, but he didn't.

"And what are you doing in my Zero Room, Sally Sparrow?" he asked mildly instead.

She shrugged. "Thought I'd get a look at you, is all. Donna mentioned that there was somebody else on the ship."

"Did she now. Good old Noble."

A silence settled in that was neither comfortable nor oppressive. Sally chose her next topic carefully:

"What are you reading?"

The Master frowned at his book. "A History of the Panrozanisetzn Tribes of Southern Afalatupa," he translated. "Terribly boring. I was hoping it would put me to sleep; but then, if I'd fallen asleep I might have missed your social call."

Then he smiled, charmingly and obviously put on, and she remembered who he reminded her of.

"You're Mr. Saxon!" she cried, sitting down immediately in the white armchair chair–there was a white armchair? when had that appeared?–directly across from him. "You were the Prime Minister!"

"I was indeed," he chuckled. "Well done, Sally Sparrow. I'm surprised the Doctor hasn't warned you more about me already."

She shook off her shock and went for that impossibly good lead-in:

"No, the Doctor hasn't told me anything about you," she said carefully. "I only heard a few things from Donna. The Doctor never talks about you."

No, he never did, not to Sally at least, but she saw that he always looked tired, that he always looked sad and a little bit helpless after he returned from one of his long sojourns to the Zero Room.

"And what did Miss Noble have to say for me?"

Sally answered honestly. "She said you're a psychopathic maniac who's killed a lot of people."

"Yes."

"And that I should never go near you because you could kill me."

"Easily."

"And she said you hear drums in your head still, even though they should be gone. She said the Doctor doesn't know why." She looked earnestly at him. "I want to find out why."

The Master was struck momentarily speechless.

***

To Donna, she said:

"I can't believe we elected an alien."

"Yeah, well, nobody complained when it was Benjamin Disraeli."

"What?"

"Never mind."

–-

To the Doctor, she said:

"He didn't look very intimidating. Nor very mad, really."

"That's because he's getting better. More time in the Zero Room and he'll be good as new. But you really shouldn't have spoken to him, he's dangerous, and sometimes he can managed this psychic connection with humans, though that shouldn't work in the–"

"He looked ill, Doctor. I knew he wouldn't hurt me as soon as I realized he couldn't get up off the sofa."

***

The argument that followed this revelation was loud enough to be heard in Donna's bedroom, TARDIS only knows how many rooms or floors or miles away from the Zero Room.

_"You should have told me!"_

_"Like I tell you everything? Pay attention, Doctor: I hate you. I'm sick, and I'm only getting sicker, and I'm going to die here under your care. I couldn't ask for anything better."_

_"Stop saying that. I can't let you die, Master–"_

_"You felt differently on Sarn. Feeling charitable, or are you tired of letting your species die out?"_

_"Oh, now, I've apologized for that self already, he was never kind when he needed to be..."_

Sally leaned against Donna's bedroom wall and whispered a request to the TARDIS to thicken the walls or soundproof the room or something. They'd been listening for half an hour and it was obvious she wasn't going to gather any new information out of their shouts at one another.

"Did it get quieter in here?" said Donna. She was lying on her stomach, a _People Magazine_  out on the duvet before her.

"I asked the TARDIS to turn down the noise."

The older woman frowned. "You asked the TARDIS?"

Sally ignored her. "Don't you think it's odd that the Doctor's so angry? The Master is his prisoner, after all. But he sounds seriously worried."

Donna shrugged and said, "Well of course he does, they've known each other their whole lives."

Sally's eyes widened. "Have they? I didn't know that."

"And I didn't know I knew that," Donna replied, looking disturbed. "Weird."

***

Less than an hour later, the two companions and the Doctor were back in the console room. The Doctor had come up with a plan to save the Master's life, and it involved kind-of sort-of kidnapping a medical doctor to examine the other Time Lord.

"So what are you a doctor of, then?" Sally asked him.

He froze with his hands on the console controls and looked up guiltily.

Donna smirked in a way that suggested she already knew and would be more than happy to share this information.

"Philosophy," he answered, grudgingly.

"Huh."

"Don't start."

***

iii. Martha Jones

Martha Jones had left her TARDIS days behind her, with some fond memories and some absolutely nightmarish ones. She had a nice new flat now, after her last one was blown up. Her parents and sister and brother were all safe and happy; Tish had another new job (Martha had check her employer's background thoroughly), her parents were dating each other (hey, whatever worked for them), and she'd passed all her medical school exams with flying colours. She had an interesting job, and a brilliant boyfriend, a doctor in central London who helped her save the Earth in a history that never happened, though he didn't remember any of that and looked mildly alarmed when she finally decided to tell him.

"I think you ought to lie down," Tom Milligan said, wide-eyed, when she got to the part about meeting Shakespeare.

"No, honestly, I'm fine. You said you would believe me no matter what."

"Martha, I do want to believe you, but this is a lot to take on your word! I mean, if telephone booth time machines really existed, I think more people would be aware of them."

She crossed her arms over her chest and tried not too look too annoyed. "It's a police box, not a phone booth."

"What the hell is a police box?"

_Vworp vworp_

"That's a police box," said Martha, looking out the window of Tom's flat.

Tom was looking at it too. "I think I should lie down."

***

When Tom was sorted and had apologized for doubting her sanity and had shaken hands with the Doctor and Sally and Donna, when he had seen Martha into the TARDIS ("It's bigger on the inside!") and then gone back out again so they could have a chat and he could go and pick up a takeaway for lunch, Martha and the Doctor had an exceedingly awkward conversation.

It began with the words: "So, the Master's alive," and nearly ended with her slapping him and saying "How can you keep forgiving him?" and trying to storm out.

Only Donna's piloting skills had improved, and she'd decided this was an fantastic opportunity to try moving them into the Vortex, very carefully and without anybody noticing.

So it happened that Martha stormed out the TARDIS and into the vastness of space, clutching at the door-frame to keep herself from plunging over. "Wonderful," she said, moving back into the console room. "I'm going to miss lunch."

"No you won't," the Doctor said brightly. "We'll drop you off right where and when we picked you up, not a minute later. In the meantime, would you mind doing a favour for me?"

***

The examination was brief, tense, and conclusive.

"You're dying."

"I know," he said, with a dramatic eye roll. "I told you that already."

"Okay," said Martha, exercising patience. "Do you know why you're dying?"

The Master shrugged. "Because I'm on my seventeenth regeneration, not counting the time I was a cobra? Because I was resurrected by a cult using experimental technology and something went tits-up in the process? Because I'm a bad bad man and it's past time for me to knock off? Because the Doctor needs to be the Special Last Time Lord Forever all alone or it's just not the same?"

"Never mind, I'll work it out for myself."

***

"Well?"

Sally and Donna were huddled in Donna's glaringly pink bedroom, sitting on the bed amongst a pile of Sally's notebooks and Donna's magazines. Sally squished over and made room for Martha to sit down.

"He's definitely dying. I just got through telling the Doctor, and I don't think there's anything can be done. I'm not an expert on Time Lord physiology, but it looks like he's at least got some version of leukemia, cataracts, and congested heart failure. Twice over."

The younger girl made a sympathetic noise. "How was telling him?"

"Awful. I know he believes the Master can be cured, but there's honestly nothing I can do. If he were human he'd have died ages ago. I figure it's that special room that's keeping him on life support a bit longer." She'd only been on board half a day, but she felt tired, much too tired. She'd forgotten how exhausting this life was. "I've agreed to say on for a few days, in case any of the treatments work, but I'm not holding my breath."

"And the blonde pest himself?" asked Donna. "How'd he take the news?"

Martha snorted. "Rudely, of course. I wish he'd hurry up and die faster, so the Doctor wouldn't have to be put through this all again."

A silent beat passed, until Sally said: "That's–really not that kind of thing you expect to hear from a doctor."

Martha stared at her, annoyance and confusion warring inside her. "You do know that he hunted me across the Earth for nearly a year, right? Kept the Doctor in a tiny cage, forced my parents to wait on him hand and foot, tortured one of my friends to death repeatedly?"

"All right, that makes a bit more sense that you're angry."

Donna looked unconvinced. "Told you, Sally, Martha here's got her own problems with the Master. She's not going to want to help you save him."

Martha regarded Sally and rewrote her impression of her as a psychopath-sympathizer. "I understand the Doctor's sympathy," and she didn't, not really, but she was trying to, "but why could you possibly want to save him? He's a monster!"

"But aren't you curious?" said Sally, looking conspiratorial. "Something's killing him; don't you want to know what it is?"

"He's not even got that weird lightning skeleton thing anymore," added Donna. "I was sure that was what was wrong with him, but the magic white room fixed it all."

Martha looked at her oddly. "Half the time you're talking the same rubbish he does, 'temporal circuits' and 'Androrei navigatron,' and then you're back to 'magic white room.' D'you want to explain this metacrisis thing again?"

"Nah," said Donna, "it just comes and goes. Best not to dwell, I think."

"Right," Martha said slowly. "Sure." She looked back to the younger girl. "And you're positive his craziness isn't just because he's, you know, psychotic?"

"No, it's to do with the drums," said Sally in a rush. "The should be gone but they're not, that's what the Doctor thinks, yeah? So what if they weren't put there by the Time Lords? They could have just known about them and followed them out of the lock without planting the signal in the first place."

"Possible," said Donna, considering. "Unlikely, but not impossible."

"Come on. Who else would put them in his head?"

***

"You think someone else put them in his head?" the Doctor goggled at her.

"Sally does," said Martha, pouring her own tea first. "I'm not sure about any of this."

She set his cup down beside him, though she doubted he'd drink it.

In the two days since her examination, the Master's condition had declined to the point that he was sleeping nearly round the clock. She could mark it by the fact that the Doctor was typically at his bedside, which the patient railed against loudly while awake.

She had the terrible feeling the Doctor was keeping vigil.

"You know, he used to be a doctor," he offered spontaneously.

She raised her eyebrows, but that was the most she was going to contribute to this conversation. He mistook it for interest.

"He did. Not your kind of medicine, usually, though he patched me up enough times. I was clumsy in my first body, you see, and he was a dab hand at stitches and bandaging back in school. When we got older and had to choose further studies, he became a medical researcher." His voice was nostalgic, which she remembered from the other rare times he spoke about his own people, and quietly fond, which was new. "There were so many interstellar plagues and cross-species contaminations in the universe, and the Master worked at tracing their causes and permutations across time, and made recommendations to the High Council when it would be possible to intervene."

He said this all carefully, slowly, like a man reading off a script, only it was so unhurried and painfully casual that she never doubted the truth of his story, even when he ended it with, "He used to be a good man."

It was very probably the largest chunk of personal information any of his travelling companions had ever received. Martha thought: First bodies, that's when they were friends, must tell Donna and Sally. (Wait, no, don't help with their stupid research project. Morally opposed to that, remember.) Then she thought harder about it, and said:

"You're trying to goad me into helping him. You might've tried that first, instead of kidnapping."

He had the good grace to look sheepish. "Right. Sorry about that."

"You're forgiven." Stupid Hippocratic oath. "And if I do help at all, it'll be for you, not him."

They watched the hearts-monitor beep along for awhile, and then she left to throw in her hat with the other lost-causers.

***

iv. All together now

Donna found the way to the library fairly quick (two steps out her bedroom door, turn to the right, the left, the right again. Pause. "This way!" Twenty minutes of walking and they came across a set of lovely wooden double-doors with brass handles, stark and unlikely in the dimly-lit corridor. "Library," they agreed). Ancient tomes, scrap paper, gossip magazines, stone tablets, voice recordings, and any other way of transmuting information that could be imagined, all stored over two floors of seemingly endless shelves stretching away from the entrance, and brightened by long windows that looked out into a soft, pleasant white nowhere.

Yes, this was the right place.

It was Sally's idea to do research. Martha had the impression that Sally had a terrible lot of ideas, and wondered how many of them ended in disaster.

She'd already told the other two all the information the Doctor had shared. "But here's what I'm not getting: if the Master was a good person before their first regeneration–actually, wait, Donna, how many–"

"The tenth."

"Really? Okay," she continued, "if he was a good man, er, nine of the Doctor's lives ago, how could he have have got the drums when he was still a child?"

Good question. A quick visual search of the library provided no clues. A random assortment of books were pulled off the shelves, indexes scanned; none listed 'The Master,' as a topic, though some included 'Time Lords (see: fairytales, myths)' or 'The Doctor (see: who?)'.

"We'll start at the end and work our way back, " Sally decided. "Nothing to do but dive in. Find anything you can about the Doctor, and if they were such good friends maybe the Master will pop up alongside."

It was easier said than done. Several hours and countless volumes of Gallifreyan mythology later, Sally and Martha both knew far too much about the Harpsichord of Rassilon, and next to nothing about their own Time Lords.

Donna was having better luck:

"Here, listen to this: Third day in the second cycle in the Era of the Rainy Mountains, blah blah, missing Prydonian professor known as the Doctor believed to have broken non-interference law, come into contact with a human colony in the forty-third century and lived with them for up to three cycles.' What d'you make of that?"

Sally looked at the page the other woman was studying.

"Donna, how are you reading that? It's all just circles."

"Oh. Oh, dear."

***

It figured Donna would become their primary weapon in their siege of the Doctor's (Master's) past.

After the momentary distraction of a crash-landing on Hexala, a medically-advanced planet on which the Doctor and Martha posed as patients and stole ("borrowed") quite a lot of hospital equipment, she was confined to her room and given the task of searching through whatever helpful memories she could scare up.

When the Doctor noticed she wasn't around, Sally told the Doctor she was having bad cramps and had shut herself in in the pink bedroom. He left the subject well alone.

He visited the Master occasionally, but not nearly as much as he had during the other man's prolonged sleep. Their visits were short and terse, and Sally had asked most of the corridors to please tone down the volume of the fighting but not block it out entirely. Researchers, she said, could not be above eavesdropping. It turned out that Martha shared the same opinion, and they were currently camped out in the hall kitty-corner to the Zero Room, listening in.

"Koschei," she said, picking up the last word she could make out. "I can't tell if that's with a 'y' or an 'i', do you think it matters?"

"No, neither can I, but go and tell Donna, maybe she can use it." Sally thrust a pencil and spiral-ringed notebook at her. "Hold on, write it down on the chart."

Martha dutifully wrote _Koschey_ (i? ee?) in the column marked SPACEMEN WORDS, and went off to Donna's lair of Time Lord inquiry.

***

There were upsides to this metacrisis deal: the fragments of Time sense were helpful (she'd never have to wear a wristwatch again), being able to pull things apart and put them back together was fantastic (provided they weren't personal relationships, which is where she was quite certain this project was heading), and that instructional voice at the back of her head usually did have great advice, when it kept things strictly basic: grab the rotor on the left, start the equation in the middle and you'll finish it faster, don't go to Disneyland Clom without protective headgear.

Ugh, but the memories.

Some of them were fine, simple, only detached recollections of taste or scene or smell, and she had a much better sense of what Gallifrey must've been like, now. But whenever she came upon a weighted memory, something with real meaning, she felt vaguely ill.

Donna didn't like the way she felt after she'd been looking at one, all slimy and coated in someone else's emotions, and she especially didn't like how easy it all turned out to be. His whole life, history, thoughts, ideas. It was all right there if she cared to look.

She didn't like looking into the Untempered Schism and seeing a vast terrible singularity.

She didn't like paging through the Doctor's Academy days and scanning for some mention of the drums, and stumbling upon a fragment of a dark dormitory room and an unexpected kiss and no thank you closing that door right now and feeling like a voyeur.

She especially didn't like reliving the day he'd taken the TARDIS. God, that one was so vivid, every detail crisp and clean, every roundel in the wall gleaming white, and the console was smaller and bulkier and he hadn't yet jettisoned most of the rooms.

But his hearts (her heart) was racing and his head (her head) was pounding, like a dreadful hangover, and his hand (her hand) was cramped from writing too much too quickly, and he had to hurry still because they'd know he was gone by now, they'd be out looking for him, stopping him...

Oh, and sometimes there was this: this feeling of one-step-too-far, pitching her too far ahead in the web of branching recollections, like pressing fast-forward and skipping over half a video tape. Any set of key ideas could set that off, and while she was usually careful...

She wondered idly why he had left his planet, and that was enough to unstop a wellspring of pain.

Later, just when the pleasure of visiting new places and times was becoming secondary to the constant loneliness, the Doctor stumbled across an orphaned Gallifreyan child on a stationing center near the edge of the Bekta cluster. Unschooled and alone in the universe, she grew up in the TARDIS and took to calling him Grandfather, though he was still in his first body and likely younger by centuries than her own dead parents. He was a genuine renegade by then, and she was still with him when he fled to Earth. He called her Susan ("I know it sounds funny, my dear, but so would Susiqecara to human ears, and we must endeavour not to attract attention").

They settled at first in the 22nd century, but left abruptly the day he ran in to a mature Susan, aging out of range of a TARDIS and at the relative pace of a human, married and content. They settled in 1960s England instead, and took humans aboard because she knew better than he that people are the cure for loneliness.

She was his first true family after he left Gallifrey, if not by blood then by experience. And when she left him, he knew it was for a future where she would be loved and never lonely.

So that's why he brings us, Donna thought, settling back into the just-Donna portion of her mind. She was out of breath, and her cheeks were streaked with dried tear-tracks.

***

"Hey, got another potential keyword for you. Are you up to it?"

"Hit me with anything, Sparrow. Nothing's gonna surprise me today."

***

But to get into specifics: Koschei Prydonian best together adventure Academy dark lashes schoolwork experiments Theta results kissing (kissing!) studies brilliant research reminders fucking (!) disappointment rain leaving distance war disguises Master Master Master forget it forget all of it wasn't meant to happen monster Master can't forgive–

***

She reported it all to Sally as soon as she snapped back to the real world, who bit her lip and said: "Well, I thought it might be that."

***

"All right, I see your point about helping him," said Martha, returning to the TARDIS after an unexpected stop on Saturnyne to pick up more sedative. "All of this my-enemy-is-dying moping is so much worse than the my-people-are-dead moping."

Sally and Donna shared a look. "You tell her; you know her better."

"Tell me what?"

The older woman cleared her throat. "Martha, we've some hard evidence that it might be less my-enemy-is-dying moping and more my-ex-is-dying-and-also-a-psychopath moping."

And the calming of Martha took most of the afternoon.

***

Things came together relatively quickly after that, mostly because Donna hadn't yet developed any expertise in removing herself from the memories after a deep look into them. They discovered this when, after Martha had finished hyperventilating into a paper sack the TARDIS politely provided, they turned to ask the redhead what else she had learned, and found her swaying slightly from side to side, with glazed eyes.

"...Donna?"

"She's gone into the memories again," said Martha. "Donna? What do you see?"

"Grass," Donna said, slowly and in a lower register than her usual. "Red grass–red, of course it's red, grass is supposed to be red and he's going to be late, Koschei promised to be there at second sunset–no, it's morning, there's an exam, they haven't studied, too late for Ushas to help–but she helps him later, with the cheetah virus, she cures it, and before that she helps–"

"Donna?" Martha directed, sensing that they could be getting off-topic. "What about Koschei?"

"She brings him the note, the note about having to leave and being sorry."

And then her eyes closed fully and she switched seamlessly to a language neither of them recognized. It was musical, almost, full of of drawn-out sounds that seem to roll out of the ginger woman's lips at lightning speed, and Martha looked at Sally and said: "I think that's Gallifreyan we're hearing."

Which prompted Sally to move on to the final phase of their plan.

"All right. We're going to have to talk to him."

***

The Master might be used to their presence on the ship, but he looked even weaker than usual when presented with the three of them at once.

"Oh, Rassilon, what've I done to deserve this?" he whined upon waking up to find them crowding the Zero Room.

"We're working on your cure, you ungrateful lout," Donna said.

"Something you are being very uncooperative about," Martha added, checking his vitals. "I'd almost think you don't want to get better. Breathe," she instructed.

He did, managing a half-decent glare. "Still on about that? Stupid apes. Nothing can save me now."

"Who was Ushas," Sally demanded, "and why did she bring you a note?"

The Master looked for a moment as if he might vomit, and the beeping machine to his left let out an alarming wail before blinking back to normal. Then a smidgen of colour returned to his cheeks.

"Get out."

"No," said Martha. "Answer the question and maybe we can keep you from dying a horrible death."

"We're not letting you break the Doctor's heart," said Sally, which let on a bit more than she intended.

Donna added something in Gallifreyan, and all the fight drained out of him.

"Ah. So that's your trick. You're digging around in Ginger Spice's head until you find the right memories."

"Yeah, and it's bloody slow going," Donna retorted. "So cough it up before I drag the Doctor in here and see what he knows."

The Master seemed to wilt back against his pillow. "Do it."

"What?"

"Do it. Tell him. You might as well. It's his past much more than it is mine, and I'd like to see what he makes of you mining it. Or," he added, a grim smirk overtaking his face, "was that a white lie, Ginger? Oh, it was, I can see it. You know everything."

"More details than I wanted, that's true."

He laughed, which quickly turned into a hacking cough. "I can bet. If he really wanted to cure me, he'd throw himself into volcano, or take a nice loaded pistol and shoot himself out of regenerations, or–"

"Stop it," said Martha.

"I can't do it myself, not like this, but tell him," the Master said, a wild gleam in his eyes, "tell him he can save me, if he'll die properly and do his part. I've tried everything else, and it's him or me."

"His part of what?" Sally demanded, clutching her notebook.

But the Master only shook his head, eyes roaming toward the ceiling. "I won't ask, not again. I won't beg. He heards the drums. He can save me or let me die, he's had to choose before. It doesn't matter."

"It's the sedative kicking in," Martha told them. "Time-released. I'd forgotten about that."

"Master. Master, don't drift off," Sally said warningly, leaning over the bed and trying to focus his eyes on her. "If you die this time, you won't be strong enough to regenerate."

He laughed lightly at that. "Don't you know I can't stay dead?"

His eyes fell closed, and he was asleep again.

***

Foolishly, Sally started her questioning with a dangerous gambit: underestimating the subject's intelligence.

"Doctor?"

"Hmm."

"You said–after the Weeping Angels, back when you first met me and I already knew you–you mentioned you were bad at weddings, especially your own. Have you been married often?"

The Doctor looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I, er, well... Sally, you're a very attractive young woman, but–"

"–No! You dummy, I'm only wondering. I mean, I don't see any family photos tacked up on the fridge or anything."

He looked relieved. "Almost married an Aztec princess once. That was a bit of a misunderstanding. And the Sultanate of Andra Six offered me ten wives if I'd let him take a spin in the TARDIS, but I turned that one down. Queen Elizabeth and I had a misunderstanding, actually, about the marriage customs on Afalatupa–"

"But not before you left your people? You didn't have a sweetheart or anything?"

He stopped fiddling with the console and inhaled sharply. "No."

"Not anybody?"

"Not anybody at all. And you can tell Donna to leave those memories where she found them."

And she couldn't very well ask anything further after that. So–

***

"It's all very interesting, I agree," and by interesting Martha meant horrifying, "but I can't see how digging up the Doctor's past is going to make the Master healthier. We tried that already."

Sally said, "Well, maybe we ought to take his suggestions seriously. Maybe we missed something."

"His only suggestion has been to murder all of us, so, no, I don't think we should," said Martha.  
"Killing the Doctor can't be the cure to his drums. That's insane."

"I'm not saying that," Sally retorted. "I'm saying he might not be lying. Maybe the Doctor, I dunno, did something that affected the drums, made them worse, and he thinks killing him will –"

"He made them," Donna cut her off.

They all went very still and quiet.

"What?"

"The Doctor made them. He's the reason the Master hears the drums, he's responsible."

"Did you see it?" said Sally and Martha in unison.

Donna waited while they shared an awkward glance before she went on:

"No, I haven't, but he's said some things, and I think he might've done it without knowing. Well, you've heard him, he's always going on about how the Master's his responsibility."

"And?" Martha prompted.

"...And he feels so guilty. Like, horrible, searing guilt, about the Master, all of the time. I only catch wisps of it, for God's sake, and I feel like death warmed over. Who knows what it's like for him."

Sally was rubbing at her head, warding off the beginnings of a migraine. "We've been looking at this the wrong way, treating the Doctor and the Master's pasts and the drums as separate issues. What if we consider them together?"

"How're we supposed to do that?"

***

The library was easier to parse with names and places and relative dates. And what the front pages and annals of history didn't pick up, the gossip sections always did:

"Look, here, we missed it the first time. Time Lord known publicly as the Doctor believed to have gone renegade and broken non-interference law, disappeared from the Capitol the evening before his bonding to an unnamed temporal scientific researcher."

"Bonding. That's–like a wedding, I'll bet, but–"

"Psychic," Donna confirmed. "Permanent psychic link."

And Sally was already three steps ahead. "You're going to need to verify it, Donna, but I think I know what to do."

***

v. The Master

The Master knew it was all going to come out when he heard the redhead one call him beloved in his native tongue.

If she had enough of the Doctor's memories swishing around in her head for that to surface, of all things, then there wasn't much hope he could protect his dignity any longer and keep the past between him and his not-quite-husband.

But he hadn't expected to be bundled into a wheelchair and pushed–Jones at the handles, oh, this could end badly–down the corridor, up a ramp (a ramp?), down a slight hill, through another corridor, and into what had to be the library.

"What the hell are you apes doing?" he asked finally. He'd been waiting on that since the wheelchair appeared, but the strength to get it out was slow in coming. Even now he winced at how raspy and weak he sounded.

"Saving you, and shut it," said Martha Jones. "Doctor? Are you in here? You should come down now."

A lean streak that was likely the Doctor appeared at the uppermost edge of his eye-line, then whirled down a spiral staircase and thundered over toward the humans and himself. The edges on it got clearer as it approached, mercifully, and yes, that was the Doctor after all, looking rangy and rage-filled.

"What have you done?" he cried, fussing over the Master's blankets.

He tried to summon the energy for a good thumping, but it wasn't there.

"We've brought him to you so you can save him," said the little Sparrow archly.

"What?"

"We've been looking in to it," started Jones, "and we think we know now what's causing the drums."

"I know what's causing the drums!" the Doctor exploded, panic colouring his features. "It was Rassilon all along, I told you lot that. Come on, I'm taking him back to the Zero Room before his hearts give out again–"

"No," Donna interrupted, "he's not going back in there. He probably won't make it anyway, we took the long way around and the TARDIS won't change the halls back until Sally asks her to."

"Until–Sally–what–you three have been–and–she– _what_?"

The Master wouldn't mind knowing what was happening, himself, but he had an unfortunate inkling. He caught Ginger's eye and she obliging leaned forward to hear his whispered suspicions. Then she stood back and said "Of course we're not going to kill either of you, you dolt! We're just going to get him to finish his half of the vows."

Well. That clearly wasn't what either of them had expected to hear.

"What?" they both said at once.

"Your marriage vows," said Sally, business-like. She set the pile of papers she'd been carrying all afternoon on the low table beside them. "We're not sure which versions would've been used, so I've got them all. I even wrote out templates, you just need to repeat them with your names at the right places. I haven't any of the paperwork, of course, but I doubt it matters. Psychic links seem more about the enacting than the legislation.."

The Doctor looked helplessly from Sally to Martha to Donna to the Master, and back again. He finally settled on Donna, who said:

"He said his half of the vows when you left Gallifrey, the idiot. He's been bonded to you this whole time, and chasing you across the universe to get you to reciprocate."

Ah. Well. Technically–all right, that had been true in the beginning. But he was young, then. Foolish (obviously), and still blind to what a self-centered, masochistic, deceitful man the Doctor was. He had tried several times to kill him since then!

"But he's been trying to kill me," the Doctor pointed out, gobsmacked.

Martha frowned. "That was harder to explain. Either he really does hate you by now–sorry, Doctor–or he's been trying to break the link any way he can."

"There's documentation," Donna agreed. "We went through anything we could find about Gallifreyan divorce, and I for one cannot believe that any remotely advanced society could be so optimistic so as to not bother inventing it! You moron," she turned to the Master in exasperation. "What did you think was gonna happen, messing about with a psychic link like that?"

That one didn't need answering, but just to be cheeky he coughed out: "Thought he'd come back."

The Doctor looked thirty seconds away from a good sob. He was searching Donna's face desperately.

"But–"

"The longer you've been apart from him, the madder he's gone. Don't you see? Those vows changed his mental state retroactively, reaching back in his personal time-line. He saw the drums as a child because he knew he'd lose his mind eventually, because of the empty bond, and it's all just one massive reverberation echoing back." She knocked on the long oak table, one-two-three-four. "Bloody Rassilon didn't make the drums, only traced them out of the lock. Koschei made them himself, to fill the void."

The Doctor appeared unsteady on his feet, and Martha took his arm and led him slowly to an alcove bench beside a brightly-lit window, Sally following with the Master's chair.

"When the Time Lock was re-sealed, Rassilon and the others lost their link to the Master's mind, but the drums themselves are still there," she explained. "Nothing changed for him except that you stuck him in a psychic-healing room and were around all the time. That much exposure to you–to your psyche–it amped up the destructive process, moved it from destroying his mind to his body."

The Doctor looked at the Master. "They weren't driving you mad," he said, suddenly, "they were never driving you mad. They were keeping you sane when you'd set up your head for permanent reciprocation. Oh, you stupid–"

"Oi, no name-calling at your wedding!" said Donna.

"And me!" he went on, talking over her and dropping to his knees. He was very close to the Master now, and his image was much clearer: earnest face, troubled eyes. Oh, just like old times. "I should have noticed. An unfulfilled bond would amplify all your impulses: All those times you offered me the universe, all those ludicrous disguises–you built me a whole world to ease regenerative trauma!–how could I have not seen it?"

"It's all right Doctor, nobody's blaming you for not knowing," said Sally. "Even knowing about the marriage and you leaving, we wouldn't have figured it out completely if Donna hadn't taken a peek inside the Master's mind."

He rounded on her instantly. "You did what?"

"He was asleep," Donna waved him off. "Didn't even notice me in there, and I promise I only looked at that specific time."

Ah, so that explained the redhead's unexpected gentleness. God only knows what state she saw him in, in his head. Those first days without the Doctor were...well, they were better than the nights without him.

But he's gone off on another tirade, irresponsible and reckless are getting thrown around a bit, and the Master's too exhausted to listen. Even keeping his eyes open was a useless effort. He'd really appreciate a quick death this time, but it didn't look as if that was in the cards.

Ginger sounded distinctly unimpressed:

"Calm down, Spaceman. You've still got to make it through the honeymoon."

And that was when the Master let unconsciousness take over.

***

When he came to, it was to the sight of Doctor holding his right hand loosely over the arm of the wheelchair– still the stronger hand of the two, he could barely feel the other one now–and speaking a long rambling line of Old High Gallifreyan.

Wait.

"I will keep him through all his lives, more dear to me than any other love, and place his joy above my own, his liberty above my own, his hearts above my own, and join myself to him for both our eternities."

Martha Jones looked up from what appeared to be a massive clipboard and looked over at Ginger, who gave an approving nod.

"Okay," said Jones in English, making a mark on her clipboard, "that's the last of it."

The Doctor looked grim. "Good. Sally, go and ask the TARDIS to put the corridor back where it belongs, please. And then stay away from me for a few days if you expect to remain on my ship."

The smile that Sally Sparrow had been wearing melted off her face. "But we saved him."

"Yes, and thank you," the Doctor said, less harshly, but with eyes still fierce. "I'm sure I'll remember that when I've had some time calm down. But you all just pushed me into a psychic bond with the Master, and you nearly killed him to do it. I'm very angry, and I'd rather you didn't see me this angry."

"I–" Sally started, but Donna shushed her.

"We get it, we're gone. Come on girls, Blondie's safe now, and I left a nice bottle of pinot gris in the neon kitchen. Let's congratulate ourselves, all right? Wedding well done."

Martha and a despondent-looking Sally trooped out of the library after her, and the last two Time Lords in existence were alone.

"So," said the Master.

"So," said the Doctor.

The Master looked at the hand the Doctor was still holding.

"Did Martha Jones just perform an entire High Gallifreyan marriage ceremony," asked the Master, only it was less of a question and more of a statement, because, although that was an absolutely mad thing to assume had just happened, he couldn't come up for any other explanation for what he'd heard.

"Yes. Donna translated. Sally just sat there and looked smug."

The Master reflected on this. "I'm rather fond of Sally Sparrow, I think. She's clever."

"She is," the Doctor agreed. "They all are. They saved your life. Are you feeling better? You're looking stronger already."

Was he feeling better? What a question. He was feeling the beginnings of a new reality. He felt like a man caught in a prolonged regeneration. He felt like there were no fucking drums in his head.

"That's fantastic," the Doctor beamed, only that was wrong, because the Master hadn't said a thing out loud.

He snatched his hand back. "Oh, no," he sighed, "oh no no no no no."

"What? What's wrong?"

"That is not how this is going to go. You are not going to take little peeks inside my head as if this were a real marriage. We are not going to hold hands and share each other's dreams at night and sleep in the same bed and go nostalgic over our dead planet–"

"I didn't expect," the Doctor interjected, but that Master kept going:

"We're not going to stay in this rickety old ship and pick up pretty humans and save forlorn planets from barbarous invaders. We're not going to do any of that, my dear >Doctor, because there is nothing left between us, and I am not going to stay here with you."

"You–but the bond's sealed now! I said my part. I should've said it nine hundred years ago instead of leaving you linked to me like that," he babbled uselessly, "and I'm sorry, Master–"

The Master was having no more of that. He'd suffered the indignity of being prisoner, being coddled, being married while unconscious, but he wouldn't suffer the indignity of the Doctor's apology. He struggled to his feet and out of the chair, and made it four steps towards the door before his legs gave out and the tiled floor rushed up to meet him.

***

"I said he'd get better, not that he'd heal instantly! Stupid Time Lords."

***

For the next few weeks the Doctor thought only of the Master.

There were no more trips to foreign planets or distant futures, no voyaging out of the TARDIS at all save the day Donna declared she was taking them to Tesco come hell or high water. (The ship provided a wide variety of food in the kitchen cupboards and various refrigerators, but for some reason it couldn't manage a proper full English without burning the eggs or the bacon or both).

She piloted them to a Sainsbury's ("Oh bloody close enough"), and the three companions stocked up on bacon and shampoo and newspapers ("It's 1999, it'll make for some good nostalgia") and Pringles and anything else the TARDIS didn't provide.

When they returned, the Doctor was still crumpled in the Zero Room's spare chair, watching the Master sleep. The Master was curled up on one side of his bed, and the other side looked nearly as rumpled as the Doctor's clothes.

They should have expected it, Donna pointed out, from that bit in the vows about thinking only of the other's well-being. But Sally and Martha had only heard that as slushed consonants and melodious humming, and they weren't as accepting of the Doctor's frantic pacing and general panic over his husband's health. Though they did all take turns bringing him food and water and relieving his place at the Master's side those rare occasions he fell into an exhausted, unwilling sleep in his own bedroom.

The drums were gone but it was a long road back from the edge of death.

Martha had examined him after the collapse in the library and confided in the Doctor what he was probably right to be angry with them all: another hour outside of the Zero Room would've forced a regeneration or two out of the Master, if not killed him outright.

It took days for the Master to wake up after that, and days more to figure out how to move his muscles, how to blink his eyelids, how to form words outside of his own head.

"He's relearning every cell in his body," Donna told Martha, the explaining face on. "He's taught himself to survive without the Doctor's half of the bond, and now that he has it, he's gone into sensory overload."

Martha had seen enough alien medicine not to argue with that.

It was during her watch that he actually made it out of the Zero Room. She was reading a copy of Psychology Today –the only magazine Donna had brought back from their shopping run that wasn't filled with celebrity gossip–and she didn't notice he wasn't in the room with her until she heard slow footsteps in the hall.

"All right," he said through the doorway, tone trying for imperious and coming off as delighted. "Now, I'm going to need a suit and tie, both preferably black, and a TARDIS. Get on that, will you, Miss Jones?"

And Martha rather thought she might.

***

Soon the Master was spending his days in the library, the swimming pool, the games room (Ginger Spice was surprisingly competent at 11th-dimensional chess). He slept in the first bedroom he found after walking for ten minutes away from the Zero Room, which seemed far enough for comfort but not obsessively distant. He knew as well as any on board that the old Type 40 could shuffle his room next door it the wretched place if she were feeling vindictive. He just counted himself luck that she'd forgiven him for the cannibalism fracas.

He wore the blue oxford shirts and crisp navy blazer and denim trousers Sally dug up from the TARDIS wardrobe for him–

("It was all I could find, but at least they're black jeans?"

"I refuse to believe the Doctor doesn't have at least one suit stuffed in that massive wardrobe of his."

"I think he's hidden them.")

And in his head, he kept a solid brick wall at all times. It wasn't hard, not when he no longer felt that same animal pull toward the Doctor that he had for centuries. Oh, he was enticing enough, this one, all lean angles and luscious-looking hair and long fingers and plump lips. He thought he was being subtle too, the idiot, with his awkward hovering one day and careful ignorance the next.

That hadn't worked when they were young, and it wouldn't fool him now

But no, thanks. There were billions upon billions of attractive lifeforms in the universe. When the Master really felt the need to work out this new body, he'd go and shag one of them. The Doctor could suffer the post-bonding need as he had, painfully, and within a few months with the wall between the effects would lessen. They would both stop wanting, and be able to go their separate ways.

The Doctor had done him enough damage already.

***

Only once did Donna ask him how he felt, without the drums and the pull to his husband.

"Don't," he'd said. "Don't call him that." Then he had looked thoughtful, but not mocking, and when he said, "I think I feel like myself, again," she left it alone and shut out whatever that might mean.

***

It was only later, after they'd all (really, all) led a four-day rescue mission for a lost child in the Gamma Forest and returned for a successful recuperation in their own bedrooms, that she allowed herself to wonder what he might mean.

She skimmed through the memories lightly, quick to pass over anything that looked to intimate or personal. After a few hours she was quite positive that she knew what he meant: this was the Master as he had always been–cunning, brilliant, determined, ambitious; and as he could once have been–compassionate, studious, brave, independent–had he not foolishly spoken his vows the day of his failed wedding.

And everything was as it should be.

***

Except.

***

vi. The Doctor

He was miserable.

Ages ago, when he was a student at the Academy, young enough to be barely out of the initiate dormitories and sectioned away with the other Prydonians, the Doctor had felt something similar to this misery. There was another boy, blonde and golden and brilliant.

He had wanted nothing more than to bathe in the radiance of this other boy's smile for as long as possible, and any time this boy was out of his sight or range of hearing was a burden to him. He felt a possessive pull to this boy, so strong that at the time he would've gladly gone without food or sunslight or open spaces if only the other boy would speak to him.

Naturally, when they did come into contact, they did not get along. There was much arguing during and outside of classes, reprimands from professors, sabotaging of each other's assignments, and (on his end of things, at least) furtive masturbatory excursions to the showers.

But that unhappy time that had left him ragged and jumpy had come to an end. They'd made their peace eventually, him and Koschei, and then there was a decade of tentative kisses and experimental groping before they'd fallen into bed and each other's velvety minds.

There was talking and touching and laughing together. There was the same life he was always going to lead–from student to graduate to assistant professorship to his own classroom and desk and students–only now he had _Koschei_ with him and everything was a thousand times brighter than it could've been otherwise.

All the joy that came after made the interminable waiting worthwhile.

Ah, but things do go pear-shaped. His dissatisfaction with the Academy system was not his love's fault, nor was his frustration with their failure to procure a time travel capsule for their personal use.

("Don't you get tired of tracing diseases across the universe? Don't you want to change things?"

"Please don't shout like that, someone could hear you. You know I do, but it's not possible, my dear. The laws are there for a reason. Imagine if we disrupted a fix point–"

"–But think of how many things aren't fixed! You've done the calculations, you know we could help things. Lesser civilizations, extinct societies, think of what we could see!"

"We will, Doctor. One day, we'll have our TARDIS, and we'll get out into the world.")

He's never been good at waiting.

The night he left–the night before they were scheduled to be bonded, and that was really a bureaucratic error, not pure maliciousness on his part, he'd wanted to be wed seasons ago, when the urge to run was still bearable–it was raining.

The Doctor found him in his laboratory overlooking the Panopticon and apologized for his poor moods lately. He apologized for wanting to leave their stagnant planet behind, and for wanting to have Koschei with him. He apologized, in very broad terms, for any unhappiness he had caused Koschei recently or would cause him in the future, and please be assured he did not mean to do it.

Koschei heard it with a smirk on his lips, kissed his betrothed until he'd soothed the waves of guilt emanating off of him, and then pulled him down onto the desk and fucked him so slow and sweet that the Doctor was reduced to a babbling, lovestruck mess.

Stumbling out of the research building, it was only that sense that there was more to see and do in the universe that pulled him towards the locked hall where the decommissioned TARDISes were kept. The pull he felt towards the old Type 40 capsule was the only feeling he'd ever had rival what he felt for Koschei, but it was similar enough to blind his better judgement.

The time-capsule repository was a long chamber off the side of the Subcommittee for Prevention of Temporal Anomalies building, and he'd made a brief stop-off there to scribble a note and drop it Ushas's in-tray, explaining his plans (obliquely enough not to be incriminating) and instructing her to bring the longer sealed note to Koschei when it was clear he wouldn't be returning.

Truth was, he'd planned the whole thing.

The Master asked him about it last week, after they came back from the Gamma Forrests. They were walking down the corridor, he several meters ahead, and he turned back abruptly and said "You always knew you were going to leave. You saw it in the Untempered Schism."

"I–Yes. I knew would happen." Sometimes–not often, but sometimes–they saw these things in advance.

"You planned it out and hid it from me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

The Doctor had swallowed and told the truth: "I didn't think I could stop it. I had to get off Gallifrey, and I had to do it soon.'

"And I didn't want to go," said the Master, looking resigned.

He'd gone into his room and closed the door without slamming it, and the Doctor had gone to his own room and thrust desperately into his own hand, remembering that last night in lab.

***

"He's got it bad," Donna commented . "Did you see them in the jail cell together?"

"He was practically whimpering at him," Sally agreed.

"It's almost sad," Martha added. "I know it's easier to judge when you're outside of it, but these one-sides things never end well. He's going to have to get over it eventually."

"Pfft! He'll never manage with them both in the same ship."

He'd had enough. "I can hear you, you know," he called up to the console room.

Silence.

"Doctor?"

"Yes. I asked the TARDIS to ignore your requests from now on, Sally, including the right to private conversations from ten feet away. If you want to gossip about me, go do it somewhere else."

Two sets of footsteps thumping away; a third coming closer to the console.

He wasn't surprised to see Donna's head dip over the edge of the lower level, but he wasn't pleased either. "Okay if I come down there?"

"Wish you wouldn't."

She frowned. "Fine, I'll stay up here and talk at you. You, skinny-britches, need to man up."

What?

"What are you talking about?"

"It's completely obvious to everyone here that you're arse-over-tit for your husband. We've been talking, actually, and Martha's pretty sure you've always been gaga for him, but none of us noticed because we didn't realise you were kind of gay–"

"–I am begging you to stop talking right now. Please. Donna. I know you've got my memories, and you've been through his, and Sally too-smart-for-her-own-damn-good taught you the value of research, but this is between him and me and I don't want to talk about it."

Donna said, "All right, love, you only had to say."

"I–thank you."

"But I would keep it between you and him quickly, because he's been talking with Sally about some lost planet asteroid thing, and I think he's figuring out how to get his own ship."

***

"No."

"You can't reasonably expect to stop me leaving."

"No but I can try to make you see sense. You should stay here, instead of gallivanting off in some broken-down TARDIS that hasn't seen repair in millennia."

"Like this one, you mean?"

It was the second prolonged conversation they'd had since the Master's convalescence ended that didn't involve running for their lives or breaking out of underwater prison or the like. The Doctor thought he might prefer the latter variety.

"There's nothing the matter with my TARDIS," he said finally, "and she's the last one in the universe so you'd better get used to her, unless you want to travel linearly for the rest of your regenerations."

***

There were two other uncomfortable encounters before it all fell apart.

The first was several days later, after they'd spent an exhausting day on 1969s Earth, wandering around Woodstock. They were by this point aiming to get Martha back to London in time for her lunch date with Tom, though privately the Doctor felt to get within a week of their departure would be perfectly acceptable.

He had just seen an excitable Sally and a not-displeased Martha off to bed (not displeased because it had been Woodstock this time and not the moon landing again, "But really, Doctor, I've had enough of 1969"), and was walking towards the swimming pool with an eye to a swim before bed, when he turned a corner and walked in to the Master.

"Hello."

The Master was frowning slightly, and said nothing. Instead, he lifted his fingertips to the Doctor's left temple and closed his eyes.

He opened them seconds later and said, "You're not even trying to break into the link."

It sounded like an accusation, somehow, and the Doctor floundered.

"No, no, of course not. You told me not to."

The Master's frown deepened, and he turned and stalked away.

***

The second and final instance was later that day, following an excursion to 2020s Cairo, wherein they had to prevent a wandered-off Sally from crossing her own timeline, and also locate some stolen jewels (long story).

He made it to his own room unmolested (regretfully), and was awoken when he rolled over in the night and found another body in bed with him

"You know, you should consider yourself lucky I'm used to Donna crawling in with me when she can't sleep, or you might've given me a heartsattack."

"You knew it was me," said the Master against his shoulder. His right leg was draped over both of the Doctor's own, and his arm thrown across his chest. "Bet you Ginger Spice doesn't sleep this close."

"No, she usually keeps to the other side of the bed," he said, barely suppressing the quiver from his voice. "What are you doing here?"

"Hmm," he hummed, "I don't really know. I was thinking about you. Specifically about talking to you, and how that usually ends with both of us too cross for words."

"Not always," the Doctor pointed out, shifting slightly so that the Master's head rested comfortably on his shoulder and trying to calm his racing hearts.

"No, not always. We used to talk easily in bed, so I thought I'd give that a try."

"Oh. I see."

"Mind you, the sex could have had something to do with it."

He was going to regenerate out of anxiety.

"I–you don't want–I mean, do you want...?"

The Master resumed stroking his arm. "No, Doctor, I don't. I don't even want to talk, come to think of it."

"No?"

"I thought I might sleep better beside you, though," he said, and the Doctor heard the touch of hypnotic suggestion in the Master's tone, and found he didn't care. "Go back to sleep, Doctor."

He did.

***

"You look awfully bouncy this morning," Donna commented the next day.

"It's a bouncy kind of morning, then. We're going to take Martha home today–I'm sure I've fixed the issue with the navigatron, we can get you within half a day of when we left," he said, with a look to Martha.

"Good enough for me."

"–Then we're going to take Sally to the Museum on Fragletine, so she can see the poetry-reciting frogs–"

Sally, who was much more of a late-night person than an early-morning person, yawned widely into her coffee.

"–And we're going to work on your piloting, Donna, if you feel like it." He clapped his hands together, surveying the console room. "I do like a full TARDIS."

"Yeah, about that," Donna broke in hesitantly. "I'd say you can check off the items about the navigatron and my piloting. I successfully steered her to Shada last night."

"You did! That's brilliant! Well do–" and then the rest of it caught up with him. "Why...why did you go to Shada?"

"Doctor," said Donna.

"How do you know where Shada is? How do you know _what_ Shada is?"

He was perfectly aware of the escalating note of panic in his voice, but he was long past caring.

"The Master told me about the shipyard there, and gave me directions. Has all the supplies and schematics he needs, and thinks he'll be able to rig up a working TARDIS within a couple years."

Whatever cry of protest he made at this revelation was drowned out by Martha and Sally's twin sounds of shock and outrage.

"Years?" said Sally. "He'll starve to death in the meantime!"

Donna shook her head. "He's got some food stores, and communication tech in case he needs to flag anybody down. And," she cast an apologetic glance at the Doctor, "he's got a working Vortex Manipulator, so I don't imagine he'll be there very long, TARDIS or not."

"You didn't."

"He had to leave Doctor, you can see that," Martha said, unexpectedly.

"You sent the Master out into the universe," he charged. "Do you know what kinds of havoc he could be wreaking? Right now, or a million years in the future, or–"

"He's not," Donna said, talking over him.

"He–"

"He's not," she said, louder. "He's fine. The Master isn't going to cause anybody any harm, not any more than you would. And if you truly want him to get better, you'll leave him alone."

Martha was nodding vigorously, and Sally said: "He's learning how to be a good man, Doctor. He can't learn that with you around all the time."

***

He took them home one by one. It was a slow progression, and they left on their own time, but they all understood what was happening.

Martha was the first to leave. They had spent a day at the beach in Rio, early twenty-second century, since it was Sally's turn to pick a destination, and when they were all back in the console room, shaking sand out of their shoes and toweling off soaked hair, she took the Doctor aside and said: "Listen, this has been–I mean, I wasn't expecting to stay so long, and it's been interesting at least, but.."

"Martha. It's all right." He was smiling, faint but true. "It's time to go."

She exhaled. "Yeah, it is."

"All right. You go clear up your stuff, and then: next stop, London."

She'd missed that lunch-date with Tom by hours, but he made her some pasta and they sat in his kitchen and she told him about how that year seemed so much further away, now, and how forgiveness works in the funniest ways.

***

Donna left three days past her thirty-seventh birthday.

They both pretended not to notice, but she'd been getting ready to go back for awhile.

"Spaceman, we had a good run this time. I'm going to miss you, you know."

He hedged his bets, at the expense of pride. "You don't have to go just yet. Lots more universe to see."

She only shook her head. "I really do. There's my own life to be getting on with, especially now I've got this half-genius brain. Feels like I'm wasted in here, telling you how to go about your life."

His smile flickered slightly. "Got any more advice on that before you leave?"

Donna Noble of the half-Time Lord brain looked thoughtful. "Only what I've picked up from the telly. How about this though: Figure out yourself first, and then go looking for what you want."

"And if I already know what I want?"

"Be sure," she said. "Don't hurt him again."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Good then. I'll pilot us back, shall I? And Granddad will want to have tea with you and the Sparrow."

***

Sally went last, and it was the parting he least expected. She took them to Hexala, picked up a pint of her favourite only-available-in-the-future ice cream (Ben and Jerry's Hunka Hexal, a flavour based on alien taste buds that reminded her of leftover Easter chocolate and visits to her auntie’s garden and childhood in general), and then back to the street-corner next to Nightingale & Sparrow.

"What?" the Doctor said, looking out the TARDIS doors.

She grinned at him. "I told Larry I'd be back before our anniversary, and I woke up a couple mornings ago thinking, 'I'd quite like to celebrate that anniversary.' So I think I'd best be heading out."

"I–Sally, I know this hasn't been the trip I promised you. Donna and Martha at least already had a run around the universe each, but you really only got–"

"A fantastic trip, Doctor. Don't sell yourself short. I had half a year of pure adrenaline, in here and out there."

He saw her into the shop, helping her carry her accumulated bags, and bid her a fond farewell.

He didn't see the co-ordinates taped to the console until he'd set the ship hovering into the vortex, and though he briefly considered going back and asking Sally to explain herself, he didn't need to. He already knew what they would lead him to.

***

vii. Hello Again

"You haven't been talking with Sally Sparrow, have you?"

"What?"

"Ah. So that's a no."

The Master looked good, no denying that. Blue jeans and a gray pullover, magnifying goggles resting around his neck, black oil smudged down his forearm and over his hands. A wrench clasped in the other hand, hmm. On his way to repair something? Slightly longer hair, slightly older eyes.

Shame he seemed so annoyed to be meeting the Doctor here, on New New Earth, where he was apparently just steps away from accessing a public computer console.

"Why are you here?" the Master demanded.

"You know, I was just wondering that, myself," he replied, leaning again the freestanding public computer. He was astounded to find his elbow pushing the screen in on itself, as computer screens were not supposed to do.

The Master reached past him and pulled it shut again, but the Doctor had figured it out. "This is your TARDIS. That's very clever, that is. You got the chameleon circut working all right I suppose? Because actually I could use a hand with mine, I don't know if you've noticed but it seems to be stuck–"

"Leave."

He stopped rambling. "What?"

"Leave. Go away. I don't know what you're doing here or how you found me, but I am telling you to leave me alone or so help me I'll revisit my unfinished 'how to kill the Doctor' plans."

He looked stern, serious, uncompromising, but surely not...

"You wouldn't," the Doctor finally said.

"I might."

"We're–"

"Separated, if you need human parlance to get you through the day. Divorced, even. The last seven hundred odd years of my life have been an exercise in prolonged adolescent longing: no more. I have no husband."

No. No, that couldn't be true. Not as definitively as he meant it to be.

The Doctor caught the Master's forearm as he pushed his own way into the computer screen TARDIS, and the latter swiveled back to regard him dispassionately

"But–but you came to me before you left!" the Doctor said. "I thought–you were in my bed again, I didn't mean..." he trailed off weakly.

The Master's expression turned to pity, then, and the Doctor felt embarrassed.

"Can't you recognize a goodbye when you see it?"

***

The next time the Doctor found him, it was completely by accident, at the Eye of Orion. He was taking a brief respite after leading a successful, if exhausting, revolution of the spider-people of Melna against their cybernetic slavers, and hardly expecting to come across another soul. The Eye was always a restorative, peaceful, mostly-deserted place, and visitors tended to keep to themselves out of respect for the calm.

He was surprised, then, by nearly tripping over a blonde woman reclining in the tall grass overlooking the Mirror Lake.

He was more surprised when he started to apologize, got a good look at her, and realized who she was.

"Lucy Saxon," he said, feeling like he'd missed the punchline of a well-known joke. "What–what are you doing here?"

She looked completely terrified to see him, and was up and out of the grass and running down the hill in seconds; he followed, of course, because he could think of one way she could have got there, even if it was ridiculous.

"Wait!" he called uselessly. He followed along the lakeshore and into a swath of trees, and–oh. Watched as she ran straight for the largest tree and, clawing briefly at its bark, disappeared inside the wide trunk.

Huh.

"Hello?" he called out tentatively towards the tree. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you or anything. I'd just like to have a word."

Minutes passed, during which the Doctor strongly questioned his sanity. After all, Lucy had been a pretty, slim, ethereal girl; it wouldn't be the first time he'd confused a Dryad for a human.

Then the same tree-trunk creaked and moaned and sprouted a sliding door, and out stepped the Master.

"Should've known you'd be back around now," he said, amused. "Bad penny."

It had been just shy of twenty years since their truce/divorce on New New Earth. The Doctor's mouth went dry at the sight of the man–jeans and pullover sweater, rather more casual than he recalled, but his features were the same, his body was the same, and all that glittering confidence that rolled off of him, the Doctor remembered that well.

It was only the other man's raised eyebrows and general look of well I'm waiting, start talking that jolted him out of his reverie.

"Right, yes, hello Master. Was that Lucy Saxon who just tore down that hill like she was being chased by Daleks?"

"Lucy Cole," he corrected, unbelievably. "Saxon never actually existed, so she can't very well keep the name. Not that she wanted to."

The Doctor tried another tactic: "Why was that Lucy? How is she here?"

"I'm showing her the universe."

Not an ounce of irony in his tone, either. Mockery, sure, but it was unclear who he was directing it towards: Lucy? The Doctor? Himself? Could this be a man comfortable laughing at himself? The Doctor wasn't sure he could have said that about Koschei, much less the Master.

The Doctor said nothing, was dumbstruck. He simply watched him, silent and waiting, and that alone was enough to get him to start explaining:

"I owed it to her, all right? Promised to take her to see the stars. She had some spare time..."

"She's been confined to a mental facility since the Valiant," he pointed out.

That seemed to intrigue the Master. "You've been keeping tabs on her?"

He shrugged. "Minimal ones. Just checked to make sure she was okay before I took off after–after that year. I don't know what's happened since then."

The Master glanced back at the tree.

"They released her," he said, "because she's not actually insane. She was smart enough to say her initial recollections of the incident on the airship were hallucinations. Claimed I'd been drugging her food, said she didn't remember shooting me–always a smart girl, was Lucy." He looked back at the Doctor. "She's not in prison, but where's she going to go? Her whole life was on Earth, and now she's always going to be an insane murderer there, no matter what the courts said. And she did help resurrect me that last time, mustn't forget that. Besides," he added, with a sweeping gesture at their surroundings, "you were always going on about the majesty of the Eye. What better place to bring a broken mind?"

Lucy didn't look twenty years older than the last time the Master had died.

"You picked her up the day she was released from that hospital, didn't you?"

He's not prying at the bricked-up link in their heads; he just knows the man that well. The sense of melodrama would appeal to him.

"I might've," the Master said, a smile tugging at his lips.

"And how's it been, having someone with you?"

He shrugged. "Fine."

"Fine?"

"Ordinary. Comfortable. I did a number on that one, really. She hardly speaks, it's like traveling with a goldfish. No effort on my part at all."

The Doctor would bet six regenerations that right at that moment Lucy Saxon was floating in a swimming pool twice the size of his own TARDIS's, or reclining on a plush bed in her own room, or searching tourist guides for their next destination. The Master wasn't the type to take something on and then neglect it, never. Koschei hadn't been the type to make amends on a small scale.

"And her?" he asked mildly. "How's she liking the universe? Been to any other places like this recently? You know, restful, soothing?"

The Master seemed to flare around the edges a little, and then his potential retort fizzled out and left simple honesty in its wake.

"She's so weak, Doctor. How did I never understand humans were so breakable, even when I was trying to break them?"

"You're not trying to break her now."

He was silent a long moment; then he swallowed, nodded. "No. No, I'm not."

***

They ran into each other fifteen years later on Earth, in 1920s Paris. It was purely by accident, and they ended up taking lunch together at a cafe in the Latin Quarter. They talked about Earth literature in general, which the Master was willing to admit showed potential, and contemporaneous Earth art, which he thought laughably quaint.

Actually, the entire lunch was one long string of meaningless disagreements, and the Doctor hadn't had such fun in ages. It reminded him distinctly of being his third body, when he and the Master had both been marooned in England and he'd taken the opportunity to visit his old love in prison. It was the same sort of animosity, sincere but loyal.

They drank too much wine and, when they bid each other farewell, it was with fondness befitting best enemies.

And the Doctor found himself wishing the Master would've touched him too often or invaded his personal space, as he had done in the days of UNIT and prison.

He was devastatingly impersonal now.

***

They ran into each other on Fortiscoto six weeks afterwards, on the opposite sides of a long war. The Doctor was with the colonizing Clemna peoples out of necessity–they were holding his TARDIS and current companion hostage–and the Master was with the native Fortiscos out of, apparently, sympathy.

The Doctor was naturally taken prisoner by the opposing side, and when the Master snuck in to rescue him, he made the mistake of comparing it to the time he rescued him from a Cyber stronghold during the first skirmishes of the Time War.

The Master stopped and stared at him. "You mean, the time the Lady President had me pulled bodily out of the Eye of Harmony so I could save you from certain destruction?"

"I–yes?"

He'd stopped working at the chains binding the Doctor to the stone walls. "The time your foppish self met me with raving pleasantries at the doors to the execution chamber, promised to make amends for that mix-up in San Francisco, and then stole my TARDIS and left me to my own devices in an orbiter filled to bursting with Cybermen."

"Oh. Right. Um."

The Master shook his head and returned to releasing him. "I don't know why I bother with you."

He set him free outside the prison with a promise to stay away from now on.

***

They passed each other on the street on Rystana. Both were walking with other people, and they avoided eye contact.

The Doctor couldn't sleep for days.

***

He sent him a message-box greeting on his eleven-hundredth loomingday, and it came back bearing a cordial: "Fuck off."

***

The Doctor saved him from an outbreak of the fatal Chen-7 virus on Apalapucia with a timely dose of antidote and brought him into the TARDIS to recuperate. He helped him into his old post-drums quarters, and decided not to risk the Zero Room.

The Master, groggy and drugged, pressed a hand to the Doctor's cheek and said, "Sometimes I miss you too much for my own good."

***

The Doctor watched him fall back to sleep and thought: this has gone on long enough.

***

viii. The Master, again

He was well enough to hobble down corridors, but the dexterity needed for a single person to pilot a TARDIS on their own was still beyond him, so he was spending his days in the library, mostly. Chen-7 attacks the nervous system first, and his own nerves were still frayed, his body despairingly slow to repair itself without the hurry-it-along push of regeneration.

But he liked this body, this self. There was so much potential here. He was ultimately glad it hadn't been stripped away and replaced with a newer model, even if his rescue had come at the hands of the Doctor. Even if it meant subjecting him to the other man's hospitality while he recuperated. Subjecting himself to his nearly-husband's lingering gaze, his cautious touches.

The man took his arm to help him from death's door to a comfortable bed, and he'd been as hard as a rock the whole time.

He returned attention to bookshelf in front of him, single-mindedly resumed his search for A History of the Panrozanisetzn Tribes of Southern Afalatupa. Maybe this time the astoundingly boring book would help take his mind off his situation.

This had been his strategy for the last century: when the Doctor occupied too much of his thoughts (and too much here means any small segment at all) he would focus on something else. It had worked so far. Mostly. And it would have to keep working, because he's already spent too much time on that feckless betrayer, that genocidal matryr, that human-loving freak, that smug, stupid, ugly...

Okay. Fine. He was arse over tit for the man and it was looking like he always would be, what should that matter?

The Doctor had ruined his life, as sure enough as he'd ruined Lucy's. He at least could take her around the universe and try to make up for what he'd done–she'd even been quite happy near the end, when she met that Prince Gy on Falmoretz. She'd make a much better Queen than a Prime Minister's wife anyway, he'd assured her.

What could the Doctor do for him? Nothing. Nothing would ever make up for the agony of losing his mind, of forgetting why he'd lost his mind, of the day to day pull of the drums and unquenchable thirst for the man himself. Not rescuing him from the virus, not letting him go without even a cursory fight at the mental barrier between them, not–

–Not walking up behind him and wrapping bare arms around his torso and pressing lips against his neck and this is where he usually ended the daydream, it was, only it didn't stop there because the Master was turning and the lips were at his own now, licking open his mouth, and–

It was real.

He was there. The Doctor, in shirtsleeves and pinstriped trousers, necktie abandoned, kissing him in the middle of the library.

The Master came back to himself with a start, and jerked away.

"I told you I was through with this."

"Well, it turns out I'm not," the Doctor shrugged. "And, honestly, if you were really through with me, you wouldn't be staying in my TARDIS right now. You wouldn't have stayed after I did my vows and the drums were cured, and you wouldn't have kept on running in to me."

He punctuated this last point by drawing the Master closer, running a hand along his forearm and settling another at his waist.

"You're not my fucking husband. You're not the man I wanted, you demented sadist. You like me because I make you miserable, is that it?" The Master was aware that he sounded insane (again), but he couldn't stop the fears from falling out his mouth. "You're only happy when you're miserable."

The Doctor caught his lips again and it was quite hard to follow that train of thought. He reeled back when he felt thin fingers dip below the waistband of his trousers.

"Oh, and now I understand. A few centuries of enforced celibacy, and you're gagging for it, aren't you?"

"You still talk too much, same as the first time we did this," the Doctor said, unbuttoning his shirt. For some odd reason the Master wasn't stopping him; he set to work unbuttoning the Doctor’s own shirt. Odd, that. "If you want to leave, then leave."

"You think I'm going to let you into my head," the Master deflected. "That's precious, Doctor, really. You think you're going to get to feel properly, without the psychic blocks. As if I would allow it."

The Doctor left the shirt hanging open and trailed open kisses along his neck, his shoulders, hands clawing their way further inside his pants the entire time.

"Instead of guessing what I'm thinking right now," the Doctor said roughly, brushing his knuckles against the Master’s hips, oh, "you could just have a look."

"Never," he bit out, pressing into the Doctor's touch.

And then the Doctor was laughing, the bastard, laughing and grinning and kissing him again, deep and filthy, and Rassilon but that new mouth of his was delicious.

He kissed the same way he always had, with his whole self, every inch of him invested in claiming the Master's lips. But there were subtle changes with each regeneration: the first version of him had been adventurous, altering his style at every encounter; the third had been dominating, the fifth shy and begging to be coaxed, and has it really been five of the man's lifetimes since he's had the Doctor's tongue in his mouth? And this Doctor, with his stupid hair and ugly shoes and wanton kisses, wasn't he just something?

Suddenly the Doctor broke away, and the Master had to hold back the cry of protest that rose inside of him.

"What–" he started to ask, hating how dazed his voice sounded.

Then the Doctor was unzipping his flies and taking hi in hand, and he shouldn't be doing this, he shouldn't, but the Doctor's palms were sweaty and his eyes were needy and they could almost be themselves again, so hungry for this. They could almost be Koschei and Theta back in a supply closet at the Academy, snuck out of their dormitories and painfully hard for each other.

"I hate you," the Master spat out senselessly, pulling him closer. "This won't change how much I hate you. You ruined me."

The Doctor was already dropping to his knees. "I know," he said, and didn't say he was sorry again. But there was apology in the way in the way he dragged a hand down the back of the Master's calf.

The Master's hands found unsteady purchase in the Doctor's ridiculous hair. "I'm never going to forgive you."

And there was a defiant edge in the Doctor's eyes in the seconds before he pushed forward, lips parted.

 _THETA_ was all that was in the Master's head at that moment, and it's what the Doctor heard as the psychic walls came tumbling down. The Master didn't intended to lower the barriers, but he couldn't maintain anything so strong while being engulfed oh god Theta oh yes more.

 _Doctor_ , he corrected even as he mouthed at the Master. _Use my name_.

The Master wanted to be annoyed with this correction. He wanted to assert that he'd call the other man whatever he liked in his own mind thank you, and he wanted to punctuate it with a sharp thrust of his hips into that brilliant mouth.

But just then he caught a moan ringing across his mind and realized it had not come from him, and that meant, that had to mean...

"You're in here too, are you?" he asked out loud, thrusting deeper. "You've pulled me into your head."

 _Yes_ , gasped the other presence in his head. _Yes, Master, yes, give me more, please, give me everything._

It's been nearly a millennia since they've done this, and long ago the Doctor would have been practiced enough to filter out the sounds of his own eagerness while he was busy sucking the Master. Now he seemed almost proud of his submission.

 _It's not submission_ , he countered, drawing back to mouth sweetly over the Master, _not this time_ , and then he pulled away entirely.

(The Master hated how inconvenient it was that the Doctor was in his head now, when he was trying to be both disinterested in the proceedings and thickly buried in the other man's mouth).

"It's not," the Doctor repeated aloud, licking his hands obscenely one after the other and closing them firmly over the Master in the absence of his lips. He looked up with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and the Master thought how lovely he looked, fully-clothed and totally undone just from this.

"I'm not giving in," he went on. "Don't you see? I'm asking you for everything, Master. I'm done with us ruining each other."

Stop it.

"You're mine, and I'm keeping you."

No.

"I need–"

"No!" he roared, slipping out of the Doctor's hands and shuffling away until his back hit the bookshelf. "Never! I despise you. You're the reason I was never great, you're the reason I went mad..."

He was quaking with fury and the desire to run, escape this place, this man, and he couldn't help the next thought to wash through his consciousness like rainwater over glass.

You left me.

"I regretted it all the time, Master. I thought I was doing the best thing for both of us, and it still broke my hearts."

"Don't lie," the Master pleaded. There was no use pretending it wasn't pleading when he was standing there, straining, broken, craving the touch of his beloved enemy. Dignity be damned.

The Doctor bobbed his head resolutely. "No more lies," he said.

He did not ask forgiveness again, or do anything so foolish as to swear devotion or promise amends.

What he did was shuffle across the floorboards on his knees and clutch at the Master's still-weak legs, his too-bony hips, his still-hard member, hold his shaking Master steady by the arse and swallow him again all the way in. He kept swallowing, wouldn't let him thrust, wouldn't let him move, and it was possibly the most perfect moment of all the Master's lives.

It could be any Doctor: first, fifth, tenth. It could be any of the ones he never met, only dreamt of when he was engorged and alone and needy. It could be any of the ones he tried to capture or kill, when he thought that might bring some measure of peace. It could be Theta even, brave reckless loyal Theta who is also this man on his knees, and the Master's going to come with that image in his mind, that all of them are the same person and all of them belong to him.

 _Of course I do_ , said the Doctor in his head. _You've always known that, haven't you? And now I know it too._

And it was those words, actually, that tripped him over, and he came gloriously down the Doctor's throat, roaring his joy and petting that wild hair.

The Doctor fell back on his heels and wiped delicately at his lips; a damp dark spot down stained the front of his trousers, and the Master tried to catch his breath and slow his racing hearts.

He looked at the Doctor and said, "It'll not be that easy."

The Doctor said, "I didn't expect it would be," but there was no regret in his voice.

And it was a start.

***

Later, much later, they would meet in other places. On populous moons with bright-lit cities or in sleepy towns in the distant future, they would learn each other all over again. And it took time, of course it did, but many good things do.

One day, they would be able to talk to each other without bringing up the past at all. One day even after that, they would talk about the past and feel no pain over it. They would fuck slow and sweet whenever they wanted (often), but especially if it was raining, because even bittersweetness tastes delicious once the sting is gone. One day, they would sleep in the same bed and wake up with tangled limbs and shared dreams, and eat breakfast in the yellow kitchen, and save people, because the Doctor loved saving people and the Master loved the Doctor.

(One day, a while back actually, Sally Sparrow was wandering around Hexala looking for an ice-cream shop, when someone–they were walking too fast for her to see who–knocked against her in the street and pressed a crumpled note into her hand. "He tells me you've done things out of order before. Weeping Angels? Impressive, Sparrow, very impressive. See that your current version gets these co-ordinates sometime soon.")

One day the Master would park his own TARDIS in the library and stay for years at a time. One day they would have an explosive argument, and he would threaten to leave, and the Doctor would tell him to:

"Get out, go, I don't know why I bother with you!"

And the Master would leave; and he would come back. He would keep coming back, or the Doctor would keep finding him.

They'd both figured it out by then. They would never stop chasing each other.

One day the Doctor would open up the ship's unused laboratory and say, "I thought you could start your research again, if you liked, not that you have to, or–" and the Master would kiss him silent and drag him down on to the table.

And the companions (of course there would be companions) would at first roll their eyes at their disgustingly loving hosts, and then plug their ears when they overhead their first domestic and learned it wasn't all hearts and roses between them, and then roll their eyes even more dramatically when they'd made up and insisted on holding hands during the next run-for-our-lives scenario.

One day the Master would turn to the Doctor and say, "We should get married, again."

But that was yet to come.

***

ix. No, it's not

Much later and much earlier still, back on Earth, a police box materialized in front of three different residences.

Two of them were London addresses, and one was in Cardiff. All three had a version of the same scribbled note card shoved through their letterboxes. As a result, there were three women waiting on the Roald Dahl Plass one brisk January morning.

"Christ, it's cold," said Donna, huffing warm breath against her numb hands.

"It's Wales," said Martha, who lived two miles away and had earned the right to shrug off the weather.

The ginger woman shook her head. "Don't know how Jack handles it."

"Especially considering how much time he spends naked."

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the wind whip up snowdrifts off the cement, until Martha said:

"What kind of trouble d'you think he's got in to this time?"

"Something he'll need help with, I'll bet you," said Sally. She was sitting on a suitcase that held most of her earthly necessities–bad divorce from Larry just finalized, half the shop gone, and she'd pull her life together next week or tomorrow but today she really needed a nice peaceful sojourn on some hostile alien landscapes.

"I bet he's found–" started Martha. But whatever she was about to bet was lost at the sight of a woman walking briskly across the Plass towards them.

She was young, barely more than a girl, and her skin had a faint green-purple tinge, like a bruise. Her hair was lustrous black, while her delicate features and slim figure would've gone over well on almost any humanoid planet, it was her eyes that were most the striking: warm and clever blue, all three of them.

She approached and called over the wind: "You will be the companions, is this correct?"

They stared for ten seconds at the three-eyed girl, and then Donna, who was heading up the rebuilt Torchwood One branch these days and was used to pretty much everything, said "Yep, that's us."

She nodded. "My hosts are still holding each other captive in the laboratory, and the door remains locked, but there is nothing stopping me from greeting you myself and inviting you aboard in the interim." She looked pleased with herself and said, with a slight curtsy, "I greet you this frigid morning."

Sally said, "Okay, hello, and where's the Doctor exactly?"

"I repeat to you again, he is still being indisposed. It has been several hours since we intended to land, and I tire of their privacy." Apparently mistaking their combined confusion for concern over the Doctor's lateness, the girl added, "I used also to worry for their health at such a juncture, but both are alive and joyful when they do finally emerge, though the sounds from within the chamber are fearsome and alarming."

Donna blanched. "I think I've figured what she's talking about, but I really wish I hadn't."

"The same," said Sally.

Martha said, "Ugh."

Deciding it would be at least warmer to wait inside the TARDIS for the Time Lord in question to appear, they collected Sally's luggage and their own belongings and followed the girl ("Litabanda Shoyanzar, from Petzer, companions") to find the TARDIS parked several streets away.

"I'm not staying, I've left Lee alone with the baby and God knows how he's coping without me," Donna insisted, and Martha had other things to be getting back to at the hospital.

Fortunately they didn't have to wait long. Three minutes in to admiring/critiquing the console room's redesign ("I like the chandelier, it adds character," insisted Sally. "The candles as well." "Looks like an opera house with the ceiling like that," Donna commented) before there were approaching footsteps from the nearest corridors, and the sound of murmured argument growing louder.

"...wouldn't be a problem if you didn't insist on teaching them how to land her."

"They need to know in case of an emergency! How many times have we been over this? It's–"

"–Practical, yes, but then you leave them unattended and this happens," and two unmistakable figures rounded the corner.

"Oh," said the Doctor dumbly, staring. "You're all already here. That's, well, that's brilliant! I was going to land on the Plass and come out to surprise you, but I suppose you already knew we were coming. Are we in Cardiff still? I debated inviting Jack, but, you know..."

"The Captain still wants to see me drawn and quartered," said the Master, "though I can't say I blame him for it."

"Give him time," the Doctor advised. "God knows we'll all have too much of it."

This sounded to the former companions' ears like a refrain, and Donna added it to her growing pile of evidence.

And somewhere between the greetings and hugs and a quick exchange of awkward glances–Martha to Doctor to Master to Sally to Donna to Martha, what are we here for and just what is going on?–and the time when proper explanations should've been forthcoming, the Doctor managed to get them all off-track by scolding his newest assistant.

"Lita, you promised you'd stay inside this time. If anybody saw you–"

"Yes, yes, you have said," the three-eyed girl sighed, all eyes rolling in tandem, "a horrible death for me, much dissection and prodding with knives. I will not repeat the action."

"You always say that," the Master noted, amused.

"This is true also."

While they debated Lita's habit of bending her word to unnatural extremes, Donna took the Doctor aside and spoke quickly, so the others wouldn't overhear:

"Oh hello there, good to see you as well. Jack will have told you I'm with Torchwood, so I'll not bore you with work stories, though God but Adipose get ugly when they mature, don't they?" She held up her left hand, palm in, ring out. "Got married. His name's Lee, works in advertising. He's lovely. Our son's nearly a year, chubby little guy, Spencer."

The Doctor shook his head, grinned at her. "Donna Noble, that's wonderful. You look so–"

"I am," she said, smiling back. "Now. Tell me honestly. It's been nearly three years on my end. How long's it been for you?"

Ah. How long had it been since the Master disappeared in the middle of the night and the Doctor let Donna and Sally and Martha off the TARDIS one by one and swore he wasn't going to give in that easily?

Not three years, obviously. Not when the Doctor was prone to sticking to one outfit for whole regenerations, and she knew how fond he was of his pinstripes and sneakers. Some time had to have passed for him to be outfitted willingly in dark denim trousers and a horrible tweed suit jacket with brown leather elbow patches what he wore very well. His hair was shorter, less voluminous, though the shoes were the same sneakers, or a similar pair. Same face,different life, this time. She wondered if the swirling coat was anywhere about, and very much doubted it.

The Master too had changed outwardly. Donna considered that the wool cardigan and fitted t-shirt ensemble was quite fetching, and that it must be uncomfortable to kiss him with that prickly-looking beard.

Appearances aside, it was the ease with which the Master had held the Doctor's hand atop the console that convinced Donna this must be far, far into their future.

The Doctor's smiled turned a tad rueful. "How can you tell?"

"Intuition," she said, revealing nothing. "My special half Time Lord brain says this is at least four hundred years ahead in your personal timelines, unless you skipped along on his and badgered until he forgave you. But that would be cheating, and you've not got it in you."

"No," said the Doctor, looking up at the Master chatting amiably with Sally and Lita and cordially with Martha (they'd known that was coming; of all of them, he felt the most guilt about Martha, could be the least at ease around her, but he was trying), hands resting on the arm of the plush sofa that had replaced the jumpseat in the redesign, no drumbeat under his fingertips this time.

"No, it doesn't count if it's not earned. Forgiveness doesn't work like that." He looked back to Donna, clearing his head. "Five hundred and forty-three years until he came back onto the TARDIS to stay, though he's still got his own somewhere around here. Seven-hundred and ninety-six overall, to the day."

She did hug him then, briefly but tightly, and said, "I knew you could do it," and then tried to go off to gossip over the revelation with Sally.

The new companion was saying something to Martha about her hesitancy to rely on the translation circuits ("My people believe language is vital to understanding. If I am never to learn your language, how I am able to know your meaning truly? Mistakes are allowed however. Mistakes are only halfway between ignorance and knowledge").

The Master caught Donna's eye as she climbed the stairs to the console platform and cut her off preemptively: "As I was just about to ask Jones and Sparrow, Ginger Spice, would you be perfectly obliging guests and perform a marriage ceremony again? I'd quite like to be awake for this one, I think."

***

They went back to the TARDIS library, because nowhere else on board was suitable for a wedding (Sally's opinion), it was the nicest room in the ship (Martha's opinion), and Donna liked the cyclic irony. Her translating the ceremony out of Gallifreyan was unnecessary now, since she wasn't stopping to verify anyone's tenses or verbs, and instead just witnessed it all as the only other (sort of) native speaker present.

The Master spoke his half of the vows first, as he had so many centuries ago. His eyes were bright and his voice was calm, and Donna thought how changed he was from the long-heartbroken lunatic shut up in the Zero Room, and not at all changed from the man who'd finally left when he needed to go and learn himself alone, properly and without the Doctor.

Thank God he came back eventually, though, for both their sakes. Those two couldn't last without each other for long.

When his half was ended and it was the Doctor's turn, the taller man paused and said in English, eyes going teary, "I do want to thank you, all of you, for what you did the first time we went through this. It meant a great deal to me then–to both of us, obviously, since the Master didn't die terribly–and it means so much to me now that you'd come back for–for us to do this properly."

And the Master said, "Oh, you bloody sap, just get on with it." But he said it fondly, and held out his own hand.

The Doctor clasped the Master's hand solemnly and started his recitation. As he rounded out the last syllable of _both our eternities_ , the Master grinned and jerked his arm. The Doctor tripped forward, and the Master caught him up with a good long kiss.

And the companions cheered as obnoxiously as they could.

**Author's Note:**

> Two things.  
> One) This is my first fic, and Two) lol I finally went back and edited this two years later because the formatting issues bothered me. How did you all read it with such shit formatting? I love you all. 
> 
> Everyday I'm [tumblin'](http://missgoodboots.tumblr.com/).


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